Monday, 28 March 2016

Here's some of what I've been working on. For a long time I used flock on my bases. Then sometime in the 1990's there was Basetex, a kind of sand and paint mix which could be painted to look like grass and bushes. So I did my Wars of Roses and French and some ACW with green Basetex and highlighted it with a paler green and yellow. Then I went off basetex and returned to flock, and one of my bubbling-under projects was to re-do the basetex with flock on all the bases. At first I thought about removing the figures and doing a complete rebasing. But there were a lot of figures so I decided to see if I could remove the basetext and leave the original basing of the filler and little stones. I found that if I 'painted' water on the basetex it softened it and then some careful scraping and digging with a small screwdriver I could remove almost all the basetex. Then a quick paint touch-up of any residue and the bases were ready for flocking. Here's the story so far. First some Wars of Roses with the Basetex.

Then some cleared bases.

The process underway. At this stage the bases are overloaded with flock. I give them all a shake in a few hours.

Some knights and bows.

More knights, crossbows, skirmishers, spears and artillery.

The baggage and peasant hordes.

My next task will be to finish of all the French before I sell them, then I'll move on to renew the Wars of the Roses bases. After that I might want to go back to painting before I return to tackle the ACW bases.

Wednesday, 23 March 2016

Here is my finished paint job on the Malifaux stuff I've put on t'bay. Just because it's done. Malifaux is a skirmish game which combines gothic horror, steam-punk, wild west and samurai and other themes. It has a nice game system which uses a deck of cards rather than dice. The figures are nice, but I've never got to grips with some crews, even though some of them are nice models to paint.

The Pandora crew with the Poltergeist, 3 Sorrows, Candy and Baby Kade.

Plus some pictures of other stuff. Most of this I bought painted and just tidied up the paint job and did the basing. These are my surplus crews as I still have other Rasputina and Lady Justice crews to paint. First Rasputina with ice golems and gamin. The figures on the left are the original metal crew and the figures on the left are the more recent plastic figures. The big plastic ice-golem was a major conversion job by their previous owner.

Then Lady Justice. With her are the Judge and 3 Death Marshals. Again, all I did here was touch up the painting and do the basing.

Another post without pictures, but here's a note of what I've played recently.

Squad Leader.I played a couple of Squad Leader games - original Squad Leader, not ASL. Both were early war scenarios, Dutch vs Germans in one and Poles vs Germans in the other. Both fun games, and both lost by myself. Wings of Glory. We had a multi-player game with 3 of us with fighters taking on a Zeppelin Stakken bomber which was absolutely huge. It's wingspan must have been 12 - 15 inches compared with the 3 inches or so of most planes. The bomber failed is mission but we lost 2 fighters to the defensive fire. We had another game with some late arrivals. This was a 3-a-side bash with everyone using one fighter. All in all, great games. ADGFirst there was the semi-finals of our club competition where my Wars of Roses managed to beat some Arabs. It was a good game against an old and valued opponent and I managed to roll good dice for my longbow for most of the evening. Then there was the final which I lost. I should have prepared better for the final as I was playing against the Isles and Highlands army of a well experienced competition gamer. I was duped by an ambush marker behind a hill, which became 2 ambush markers in the course of the game, and which I let go. Then my left flank Northern bow were attacked by some swordsmen who had 'impact', a feature of the game which allows them a plus in the first round of combat. However, after the game, an observer at the side of the table pointed out that these chaps did not have 'impact' as the impact chaps were in the centre. At the end, I had caused 17 casualties out of 21 on my opponent, but had lost 21 of 21 myself. The end was closer than I thought. Overall it was a very good competition and we'll run another tourney in the autumn.Next week is Blucher, a game by Sam Mustafa. I've the rules and cards, but for this game we'll be using another chap's stuff.

Saturday, 12 March 2016

At last, and with much cheering, here is the first game using my fully painted Great Northern War figures and using the Maurice rules. I worked out two 100 point armies for this game. There are quite a few photos as I'm very happy to see the painted figures on the table. Here's my Swedish set up. Three cavalry on the right, 8 infantry and two guns in the centre. Also visible are the measuring sticks I made up in bands the national colours - blue and yellow for the Swedes. Everything in Maurice is measure in terms of base-widths and the sticks make it easy to measure move distances and ranges.

Here's the Russian line. 8 infantry and three guns in the centre.

The Russian left of three cavalry and a noble commander. The noble's card is at the back of the table, but I can't remember now who he was.

The Russian right three cavalry. The Russian measuring sticks are in the background. I did these sticks in bands of red, blue, white and green.

The Russian infantry centre.

The game started with a couple of bombardments, then the Swedish infantry moved forward. And then, in one of the brilliant things that can happen in Maurice, my opponent played an interrupt card "That's not on the map" and a marsh became visible in front of some of my infantry. After much laughter from everyone round the table, I started to move my second rank units around he marsh. Also, as the game played out, this proved to be one of the decisive moments in the game as it split my infantry force and my attack.

The Swedish centre approached the Russians line but the front unit suffered 4 Disrupts. I was able to rally this unit with another great card, but the combination of Russian musketry and canister took it's toll.

Here is the Swedish centre after the combats. One bold regiment is pushing into the Russian line but the other units have routed. The C-in-C at the bottom of this picture now has to re-arrange the second line and the units that were delayed by the marsh.

In a good move, the Russians advanced his cavalry around the wood to threaten the Swedish flank.

Luckily, I had enough cards to advance my cavalry to oppose the Russian flanking move.

Another view of the Swedish centre. Sadly for the Swedes, the bold chappie who forced his way into the Russian line was overwhelmed.

Both sides then took a couple of turns to re-arrange the lines and bring up supports.

By this time in the game, the Swedes has lost more units and their morale had dropped from 15 to 6. Russian morale was 13 or 14. We called a halt at this point with a Russian victory. Here are a couple of final pictures from the Russian left. The cavalry duel between the woods was inconclusive, with the Swedes failing to defeat the Russians, even when using the Cavaliers card.

At the end of the night we'd had another great game of Maurice. I was particularly pleased to see the fully painted armies on the table and I hope we can play again soon. For the future, we think we may need an army card or action cards to represent the Swedish GaPa. And perhaps something to allow attackers that win an action to advance after combat. I'll work on those ideas. In this game, the Swedes had the A la bayonette and Cavaliers cards, and the Russians had Steady lads.

Next week is the final of the club ADG competition and my Wars of Roses army will be taking on the Scots-Irish.

Here is a quick update on the workbench as I finished off the Swedish cavalry for the Great Northern War. The horses mostly done, with two finished regiments of troopers at the back.

The rest of the cavalrymen, essentially finished at this stage - unless I spot something I've missed.

The bases started with the wash coat of khaki. I think a couple have had the first drybrush of sand, but I don't think it shows that well on my photo.

And a side project, here's the Malifaux Pandora crew. I've not had the chance to play Malifaux but I like some of their figures and they're nice to paint. I bought these as part painted - the ghost-type figures were painted purple - so I'm going to lighten the top half of those figures. I've started painting the Pandora figure, but still not sure about the colours to paint her dress and cloak. I'm favouring green, but was considering a blue / green combination. I'll post pictures of the finished crew at a later date.

In the background of the photo are the Swedish command group for the Jonkopings regiment. I broke a standard and had to do a repair job. I'm now thinking I should have replaced all the cast flagpoles with wire.

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Next up will be the Great Northern War stuff in action.

And at the club I've played another early Squad Leader scenario and my semi-final in our club ADG competition.